Messed!Up
I remember it like yesterday. It was 1985, I was eleven years old and got up early to switch on the telly to watch Live Aid at Wembley Arena in London, and three performances still stick out from that day: Queen (of course, there’s only one Freddie Mercury), David Bowie, and Nik Kershaw, the latter fresh in the scene after releasing his first two albums the year before with super hits like ‘The Riddle’ and ‘I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me’. Forty years later at Markthalle in Hamburg, it was time for the 40th anniversary and to celebrate those first two albums The Riddle and Human Rising on his 1984 Tour. That’s right, he put out those two albums in the same year! Unthinkable by today’s standards.
First, I’ve been to many gigs by my favorite 80s bands the last years but they have all updated the music making it sound like the 2000s. I’ve never really appreciated that because I want the sound of the 80s when watching the bands of the 80s, that kind of time capsule of the 1980s with the wobbly synth sounds and the slap bass you hear in the intro to Seinfeld. No 80s band or artist never done that – until tonight. Nik Kershaw was keen on delivering the sound of the 80s, and bassist Paul Geary as well as keyboarder Phil Peskett had to work hard tonight.
The gig was in two parts; the first was about The Riddle followed by a 20-minute break before he played the whole Human Rising album. Off we went when Kershaw took the stage with an effortless coolness and without any banter started to play ‘Roses’, continued with ‘Know How’ and ‘Wide Boy’ before he uttered a few words to the audience. Maybe he’s not the bantering kind of artists and I really don’t mind that myself, but I guess some old fans, and they were plenty, would liked to have been treated with stories and reflections, and anecdotes from his career between songs. On the other hand, it was well over a two-hour long show and with bantering it would have been a The Cure kind of show where you wonder if it ever ends. The highlights of The Riddle part were the sing-along track ‘Don Quixote’ and of course ‘The Riddle’, which closed out the set.
The flow of the show was such that if you went for drink or went missing in action (the toilet) for too long there’s every chance you might miss some of the hits. I had to wait until the intermission. After a 20-minute intermission, the band kicked into ‘Cloak and Dagger’ – one of my favorites – from the Human Racing album. From there, the band continued with more amazing songs such as ‘Bogart’ and ‘Human Racing’ which proved surprisingly proggy in a live setting. Actually, the backing band deserves special mention, delivering tight, polished instrumentation that perfectly complemented Kershaw’s voice. They delivered an impeccable 80s sound and brought us back forty years, especially Geary’s slap bass skills. And then came the biggest songs of the night ‘Wouldn’t It Be Good’, which has clearly stood the test of time and remains one of the great songs from the 80s, and set closing massive hit ‘I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me’.
The band returned for a three-song encore which featured ‘When a Heart Beats’, one more recent Kershaw classic ‘The Sky’s The Limit’ before closing the night with the Chesney Hawkes hit that Kershaw composed ‘The One & Only’.
Here’s what I love with artists like Nik Kershaw – the fans. Sure, I’ve seen lots of the passion in the crowds at 200+ gigs I go to every year but never fans that know the lyrics of all songs – all songs. Me and the photographer was standing watching a lady on the other side of the venue, probably in her mid-sixties and maybe in her early twenties when Kershaw released the albums back in the 1984, and we have never seen anyone screaming at the top of the voice like she did the whole concert. And below us, on the floor in front of the stage (think Markhalle as an amphi theatre) another fan, also in the mid-sixties, started to cry during the encore. That’s passion and dedication built up over 40 years and something completely different from the punk fans I usually hang out with.
It was a night full of nostalgia and great music, the class of the 80’s and early 90’s merged for a nostalgic recollection, and we had a great time reliving those moments tonight.
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Photos: Julia Schwendner
